@lhead = Law and Aborigines
@letter = Let us find a way to incorporate Aboriginal customary law into our justice system.
@letter = There have been many examples of ethnic or religious minorities having a large degree of autonomy within a larger nation.
@letter = Three criteria stand out as being essential or indeed mandatory.
@letter = To be subject to that law must be a voluntary decision on the part of the person concerned.
@letter = The law must be written, so there is no misunderstanding and no opportunistic discoveries to suit persons or circumstances.
@letter = The law must conform to universally accepted standards of human rights.
@letter = Given those provisos, it should be simply a matter of negotiation to achieve a satisfactory compromise.
CM Friel
Alawa NT
@lhead = Republican?
@letter = A republican is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a "state in which supreme power is held by the people or its elected representatives".
@letter = But what if the republican is selected by the top brass?
@letter = We read of determined efforts by the ALP brass to put Martin Ferguson, part of the Ferguson dynasty of trade union fame, into a parliamentary seat where he is not wanted by the local people.
@letter = One wonders if it is a pay off for when he said under pressure, "You want to defend the indefensible".
@letter = As for the silly idea of electors being able to choose from a number of candidates, forget it.
Jean Hale
Balmain NSW
@lhead = World War II
@letter = I would like to express my support for the comments made by Rosemary Evans in her letter to GLW (July 19) entitled "World War II". She correctly observes that "from 1939 the Soviet government hurried many Jews from East Poland and neighbouring West Russia away to the far-off Urals" to evade persecution and certain death at the hands of the rapidly advancing Nazis.
@letter = Many commentators have pointed out that Jews were zealous supporters of the Soviet Union. For example, Moshe Lewin (no lover of the USSR) has noted that Jews "disproportionately favoured the Communists" (Nation, 30 September, 1991) simply because they knew they would not be persecuted because of their ethnicity.
@letter = Arno Mayer observes in his book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken (New York, 1984) that the Soviet government allowed 350,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, and in fact, indirectly contributed to the rescue of 1.5 million Jews, the latter evacuated from the Soviet Union occupied by the Nazis. In contrast, other Allied and capitalist governments were refusing entry to Jewish refugees, branding them as enemy aliens or stateless.
@letter = There is no shortage of disingenuous and insincere conclusions in the massive amount of literature on the Jewish holocaust. One only has to look at the historical evidence to demolish all such deceit.
Rupen Savoulian
Mt.Druitt NSW
@lhead = Refugees and the left
@letter = When Greg Sheridan of the Australian starts attacking "Australian's disgusting mistreatment of asylum-seeking boat people" (July 21), it makes you wonder. Since when has Sheridan (the arch-conservative apologist for the Indonesian regime's genocide in East Timor) been concerned about human rights?
@letter = This is the foreign editor who seems to fall over himself every week in his haste to back up Gareth Evans in characterising human rights abuses in East Timor as minor aberrations, less important than trade, and justified by cultural differences.
@letter = Sheridan's sudden (miraculous) support for human rights came about so that he could blast the Australian Left! "The Australian Left can never bring itself to show even the slightest compassion to anti-communist refugees such as the Chinese or the Cambodians".
@letter = Well Greg Sheridan can stand well and truly corrected before readers of GLW, because the paper was covering the issue as far back as February 1994 (issue #131). We had a front cover and two other pages devoted entirely to the issue of the treatment of Cambodian and other refugees in Australia.
@letter = Wrong again, Sheridan!
Rohan Gaiswinkler
Hobart Tas
@lhead = Men
@letter = I was surprised by your review and comments on the book Masculinities by Cornell. They both appear to be behind the times and missing several points.
@letter = Men's health is now an important issue and to attempt to revive old myths that "men are doing okay and are benefiting most from the health system etc.", are rubbish.
@letter = I hope that some of your forward-thinking people are going to address this issue. I welcome feedback and correspondence.
@letter = P.S. Good to see XY advertised — its a forum for many male-positive articles that are not anti-female!
Malcolm Tyler
Glenorcy Tasmania